I smell the blood of an Englishman

I recently got an email from a Spo-fan who wanted to know if he “had solved the mystery” to my true identity. Having read my blog for some time he has come to the conclusion I am not really from Midwest USA – or Canada (as some entries imply) – but I hail from the UK. I’ve been outed: I am actually British – allegedly near Norfolk as in some of my videos I sound to him like I am trying to cover up an East Anglican accent.

While my surname is English and my ancestors hail from Somerset this was thirteen generations ago. I assured him I am not English. I could not tell if he was disappointed or relieved. I felt sorry for the fellow for it sounds like he did a lot of work to come to his (alas, erroneous) conclusion. It’s depressing to see your hard work go down the swanny.

I fancy I would make an excellent subject to Her Majesty. I drink tea; I refer to the restroom as ‘the loo’. When my patients ask me how I am today I reply I am just ducky. Better yet I am familiar with the rats in Tewkesbury. Best of all I feel quite at home in inclement weather. Jolly good fun. I may not know tuppence about football, but I can recite all the English Kings and Queens.

I suppose being British is more than knowing all the skits of Monty Python and preferring vinegar on my fries – opps, chips, but I am willing to try. Maybe The British Psychiatric Association can arrange a shrink-exchange. I can spend a year in Cornwall (speaking like a pirate) while some Englishman with visions of playing cowboy can come here to Arizona. If he gets homesick not too far away on Bell Road is a proper British pub with real British food and ale (no rubbish).

Spo-Reflections 2006-2016

28 comments

Before asking whether you’re ‘High’ or ‘Low’ Church, I’m going to take it that at end of para 1 the errant ‘C’ in your ‘East Anglican’ is uninvited.
I’m put in mind of some Fox News commentator talking with glee about an unheard-of climate-change-denying professor from the University of ANGILA. Still, most Brits, if they’ve heard of the institute at all (and most haven’t), would think it was JOHN Hopkins University.

Could say, oh, so much more but will exercise self-restraint – for now.

Okay then, with considerable reluctance:-
As another non-English Brit, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word ‘ducky’ outside ‘My Fair Lady’, but perhaps, like the also unheard-of Tewkesbury rats (which we’ve discussed formerly), it may be in severely local use.
A pub with ‘ale’? However, I might have to concede that the last word may sometimes be used as a colloquialism for ‘beer’, but only rarely I think. ‘Lads’ talk’, sort of thing.
I might also have to score you a point for the phrase ‘up the swanny’ as I would always have spelt it ‘Swannee’ (as in “How I love ya, how I love ya” and “Way down upon the S(u)wannee River….”. However, painstaking research just now has led me to conclude that your version is almost certainly the correct spelling – whilst I’ve been in error all my darned life. (Oh, sorrow!)

As Jean (below) correctly states, McDonalds and Starbucks have had omnipresences for decades here. Must be something over 20 years since I was last in any McD (or, indeed, in any fast food joint at all) and have never been in a Starbucks. I mean to keep both that way. Give me instant coffee granules every time!

Btw: Thanks for not correcting your ‘Anglican’. If you had, anyone reading my comment might have thought that I’d been a sandwich short of a picnic – and that would NEVER do!

I am very sad to report that McDonalds have a presence in most British high streets and retail parks (which I believe you would call “shopping malls”). In my local town they have seen off Burger King, which was a very sad day indeed as their burgers were tasty and edible, not limp and soggy.
Starbucks have also infiltrated our country and have in fact got up everybody’s noses by putting many nice family run tea and coffee shops out of business, making huge profits and finding a way to avoid paying any tax. Meanwhile the former proprietors of the coffee shops have been evicted from their homes because they no longer have an income and now live on benefits (which I believe you call “welfare”). A double blow to the British Taxpayer.
The success of these two companies seems to have more to do with marketing and image than the quality of their products. And of course the fickle nature of the (mostly young) coffee and burger buying citizens of our country!

That is sad news for a few reasons. One reason (odd as it is) is when I travel I would like to see ‘new and different things’ not just more of what I can see/get at home. Coffee? in UK? Say it ain’t so !

You would make a splendid Englishman but in addition to your listed qualifications I would add that you are required to understand the offside rule and the Duckworth-Lewis method and be able to defend your position on the vexed question of ketchup or HP sauce on your bacon butty. Your teeth may also be inspected. We Brits are (ahem) famous for our teeth you know.

There are McDonalds and Starbucks in jolly olde England. You might be surprised at the McDs. And don’t order pizza from Pizza Hut or Dominos, you will be disappointed. Coffee is coffee, though Starbucks offers more teas, with milk (ugh).

I knew I had a special affinity with you. My paternal line (Tipton) hails from Shropshire (Midlands) England by way of Jamaica (1670 – part of Venable’s conquest of Jamaica (per Oliver Cromwell) to colonize the former Spanish colony) to Baltimore County, Maryland. Mom’s line (Hadfield) is more recent hailing from Glossop, Derbyshire, England by way of New York City then Philadelphia in 1852. Number One item on my Bucket List is to (hopefully) someday to visit “the homeland” in England someday. But I am told that Tipton (the town in Shropshire where my paternal line hails from – how convenient – my last name) is no Strafford-On-Avon but a rather gritty industrial town. Ah, so appropriate. Thanks for sharing your history

Larry M. Is that true? That’s so good to know because I heard Tipton England was a gritty little town in the middle of the “Black Country.” I do hope to visit there someday. I’m trying to talk your fellow Canadian ( Pat of Toronto) to accompany me ( I don’t want to travel alone). So far he has shown no interest, he would rather visit Los Angeles to see where “77 Sunset Strip ” was filmed. Have you been to Tipton England?

Ron, no I have not been to Tipton UK but I know of it through Google maps. Also remember that the gritty England of the 1960′ and before is gone. England has transformed itself in the last 50 years and is no longer a place where the food is bad and everything is polluted and industrial.

Should you wish for a professional exchange, then East Anglica might be highly appropriate. Doctors there are rumoured to have been marking the records of patients who, in other parts of the country, might be thought psychologically variant to an unusual degree with the letters NFN – “Normal for Norfolk”. It’s the wide open spaces, sparse population and limited gene pool, apparently.

Having lived in England for my first 28 years and Scotland for my next 42 years, I have never heard “ducky” used like that.

“Duck” can be a term of endearment in the north of England. “Ducky” used to be used if you wanted to be thought to be imitating a gay man: it was thought that gay men were always saying “Woops, ducky” to each other.

BtW, am I right in thinking that Americans are increasingly using “bum” for “ass” or “buttocks”? When I was a boy, I was told that Americans used “bum” only for a hobo or tramp. There was a song, “Hallelujah, I’m a bum,” at which I used to giggle until informed that it was an American song and “bum” didn’t mean bum.